


Two Sparrows in a Hurricane

by transdimensional_void



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Songfic, Wakes & Funerals, eulogy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-23
Updated: 2015-02-23
Packaged: 2018-03-26 01:52:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3832627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transdimensional_void/pseuds/transdimensional_void
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Memories at a funeral. (Based on the country song "Two Sparrows in a Hurricane" by Tanya Tucker)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Sparrows in a Hurricane

The church was old, though everything around it was new. Made of rough, grey stone, with an ancient iron fence separating it from the pavement, it looked like it’d stood there for centuries.

“Maybe it has,” he muttered to himself as he took a careful step up onto the first stair leading up to the door. It had been icy out for several days now, and he knew that at his age a simple slip on the ice could lead to much worse.

“What’s that, Granddad?”

He’d forgotten Rosie was there at his side, hovering like she often did. She worried too much about him, though it secretly made him happy. He loved all his grandchildren, of course, but if someone had held a gun to his head and made him choose, he wouldn’t have hesitated to say that Rosie was his favorite.

“Nothing, nothing. Would you mind giving your old Granddad a hand up these stairs, there’s a dear.”

She put one hand under his left elbow and then took hold of his hand with her free one. It was a good thing she’d ended up tall like him, he thought, as he leaned against her. Not that she had inherited it from him. Her mum was his adopted daughter, so she didn’t share any of her Grandad’s DNA. Still, sometimes he privately thought that out of all his grandchildren, Rosie had somehow ended up the most like him.

Between the two of them, they managed to get him up the stairs and in through the church doors. It was warmer here in the church foyer, especially with all the people milling around, making hushed conversation. He couldn’t help smiling a little to himself as he saw how many people had shown up. Good. Let him see how important he’d been to the world. Let him see how many lives he’d touched.

“Do you want me to help you to your seat, Granddad?” Rosie was asking him.

“No, that’s all right. I can manage it from here. I may be old, but I’m not decrepit.” He let out a huff of laughter. “Well, at least not yet.”

The nave of the church was too cold when stepped through from the foyer. He swore he could feel a draft from somewhere. That was the problem with these old churches. They looked pretty, but they were drafty as fuck.

It was quieter in here, too. Only a few people had come through to take their seats in the wooden pews. If the conversation out in the foyer had been subdued, in here it was entirely non-existent. He frowned to himself as he made his way up the aisle in the silence. That wasn’t right. There should be laughter, and smiles, and jokes. That’s how he would want it.

An usher materialized at his elbow then.

“Can I show you to your seat, Sir?” He was just a boy, surely not even twenty yet, with visible spots and a nervous demeanor. Still, it always felt weird to be addressed as “Sir.” Was he really a “Sir” already? Hell, he was seventy-nine, and he still didn’t feel a day over nineteen. Well, not on the inside at least…

“All right, all right. Show me to my seat.” He shouldn’t hassle the kid too much. He was just doing his job.

Up near the front he could see it — the long, wooden box, with the lid propped open. But he wouldn’t think about that just yet. Over on his left the morning sunlight spilled through a row of stained-glass windows, casting rainbows across the attendees’ black clothes. Yes, that was right. This room needed a little color.

The boy showed him to a seat in the very front row, but he didn’t sit down just yet. Now that he was here, he supposed it was unavoidable. He shooed the usher away with a motion of his hand and stepped up to the side of the box.

They’d chosen a pale wood for it — the brighter color seemed to suit him, and the interior was lined with a beautiful blue satin. Not as lovely a blue as his eyes had been, though. No, there wasn’t a color in the world that was lovelier than that.

“Hello, love,” he murmured to the still form lying in the box. They’d dressed him in a black tux, with a smart black bowtie. He looked good in it. He’d stopped dyeing his hair when he’d reached, oh, fifty-five, was it? (Sometimes exact dates escaped him these days.) The ginger-brown had aged to a gorgeous silver color, and Dan had decided he’d loved running his fingers through it even more now than when it had been thick and black.

“This party is really boring without you here,” he said, reaching out and smoothing the hair back, probably for the last time. “And no one is laughing. If you were here, I’m sure I’d be laughing so hard I would cry.”

He was crying, though — just a few tears rolling down his withered cheeks and splashing against his husband’s folded hands.

The organist started up then, and he reached a slow hand up to brush the tears from his cheeks. There would be time and plenty for crying later on. But not now. Now was a time for remembrance, and for celebrating a life well-lived.

When he turned and took his seat at last, he caught a glimpse of a full church, and his chest filled with pride. See, Phil? Do you see how many people came to say good-bye?

There was singing, then, old hymns that he was sure Phil had never sung in his life, but this was what Phil had wanted: a church ceremony, just like their wedding had been. He chuckled to himself. Phil had always secretly been such a traditionalist, deep down.

Then the eulogies started, and he couldn’t keep the tears from returning now, no matter how many times he told himself this was a day for joy. They could be happy tears, though, couldn’t they? Old friends, former co-workers, family, neighbors — one by one they stood and told their favorite memories of Phil, of how he had brought happiness and laughter to their lives, of how he had been a steadfast friend, a dedicated worker, a loving father, a welcoming neighbor. And now came the smiles, and the chuckles, and even the full-bellied laughs, as people told their stories of what an adorable goofball his husband had been. Dan smiled, though his cheeks were shining with moisture.

Lily, their daughter, had asked him if he wished to give a eulogy of his own, but he’d declined. Everything important he had to say about Phil, he had made sure to say to Phil himself.

Rosie was the last to stand and give her speech. She’d worked on it for two days straight, she’d told him, and he found he was rather looking forward to what she’d come up with. She was a talented writer, his Rosie, and he had every expectation that hers was a voice that would someday be heard around the world.

Silence fell again, a listening silence that he didn’t mind so much.

“Grandpa used to tell me stories at bedtime when I stayed over at his and Granddad’s house,” she began, glancing down at a paper she had smoothed out on the podium in front of her. “He was really good at telling stories, my Grandpa. But there was this one story I used to make him tell me over and over again, any time I could get him to. I’d like to tell it to you all now.” She looked up, her eyes meeting Dan’s, and she gave him a wavery smile.

“Grandpa and Granddad met a long time ago, when they were both just teenagers. The world was different back then, and people weren’t very kind about the two of them falling in love. Grandpa Phil had just got his license to drive, and he used to sneak out in the middle of the night and take his Mum’s car to Granddad Dan’s house. He would park it around the corner, so as not to wake Granddad’s family, and then they would drive out to the park. It was the only time they could be together and know they were safe from the world.”

Dan smirked just a little to himself. What Grandpa Phil hadn’t told their granddaughter was that they’d both lost their virginity in that park in the backseat of Phil’s mum’s car. The way Rosie phrased it sounded much sweeter and more romantic, though.

“As soon as they were old enough, Grandpa and Granddad moved out of their parents’ houses and into a little flat of their own. They both worked two jobs just to be able to afford the rent. Grandpa always told me that it was very hard but that they were very happy because they could finally be together like they’d always wanted.”

That was true enough, Dan thought to himself. In his memory, those days were outlined in gold — that tiny flat with the water stained ceilings, and the full-sized bed that two lanky boys could barely squeeze into. It had been so hard, even harder than he liked to remember. Long evenings sat at their beat-up old dining table, calculating and re-calculating and calculating again to try to stretch their meager salaries to cover all the bills. There’d been fights, brought on by stress and fear, and nights he’d worried that it was all at an end between them. But they’d been too in love, and the anger had always dissipated when they climbed into bed and clutched one another tight in their arms.

“Grandpa loved to tell the story about the time Granddad sold his keyboard and used the money to buy him a suit for his first full-time job. He always said that was when he knew Granddad must be crazy for him…or at least just crazy!”

A ripple of laughter spread through the crowd, and Dan smiled along with them, though there was pain behind the expression. Rosie had done a bang up impression of Phil just then. She’d sounded almost exactly like him.

“Grandpa worked hard at that job, and when he got a promotion, they started paying him enough that he and Granddad decided they could afford to raise a child.” Her whole face lit up with a grin then. “And that’s when they adopted my mum. She was just three then, but she says she can still remember the first day they brought her home to their flat and showed her her room. Mum says she cried for an hour when they told her she had that whole room and all the toys all to herself. She also says she’ll never forgive her dads for lying to her.”

The crowd broke into another round of laughter, and Dan glanced over to see his daughter Lily sticking out her tongue at her younger brother, Oliver. He smiled and shook his head. They’d been so sure they were ready to take on the challenge of raising a child together. Ha! But when they’d managed to get Lily through a few years of life reasonably hale and whole, they’d sat her down and asked how she felt about getting a little brother or sister.

He chuckled to himself at the memory now. She’d looked from him to Phil and back again and then just screamed her head off for a minute straight. But she’d grown to love her brother, just as he and Phil had.

Raising two children had been so much more difficult than they’d ever dreamed, especially when Phil had been laid off just after Oli’s tenth birthday. Dan had had to start working again then, and they’d had to sit the kids down and explain that there were some things they simply couldn’t afford right now. Lily and Oli had taken it in stride, and that was the first time that Dan had looked at his kids and thought that maybe he and Phil had done right by them.

Somehow they’d weathered that storm too. Only because I had your hand to hold through it all, Dan thought, his eyes fixed on the smooth top of that box.

“Once, when I was little, I asked Grandpa what the best day of his life was,” Rosie was continuing, “and he said he always figured the best day was yet to come.” She paused, and suddenly the image in front of Dan’s eyes had gone very blurry. “When I asked what had been the best day so far, he said he simply couldn’t choose because there had been too many. But some of his favorites, he told me, were the day he first met Granddad, the days that they first brought Mum and Uncle Oliver home, and the days each of his grandchildren were born.”

And today, because I get to spend today with you, he had whispered to Dan after Rosie had gone back to whatever game she’d been playing or book she’d been reading.

He’d said those same words again every day for the past six months: “Today is the best day of my life, Dan, because I get to spend it with you.”

They’d known for a while now that the end was coming. The doctors had done everything they could to treat his cancer, but they said it had reached a point where the treatments would do worse to his body than the disease itself. Six months ago was when Phil had decided to stop worrying about getting better and just get back to living his life.

They’d taken a few trips, back when Phil had still been strong enough. Dan was the one driving him now, as even with glasses Phil’s eyesight wasn’t what it used to be. But they’d still held hands between the seats, just like they had back when they were teenagers.

When travel had become too much for Phil, they’d filled their days with other things instead — games, and their favorite shows, and days out at the park with the grandkids. And there had come a day when even that was too much. And after that, a day when Phil couldn’t even get out of bed. But every day, without fail, as he lay in bed next to Dan after the lights were out, he would whisper it, “Today was the best day of my life, Dan.”

“And mine too,” Dan would whisper back, and press his lips to his husband’s wrinkled forehead.

“I will always be so thankful to Grandpa for telling me that story,” Rosie was saying. “Because what that story taught me is that love is real — that love is something ordinary and everyday, something that happens when life is hard, and when it’s easy, and when it’s sad and painful, and when everything is beautiful. What Grandpa taught me was that love, real, honest love, is something solid enough to build a life upon. Thank you, Grandpa.” She turned toward the casket, raised a hand to her lips and then blew a kiss toward it. “And thank you too, Granddad, for living out that example for me and for all of us.” And she turned and blew a kiss toward Dan as well.

Dan’s head was in his hands then, and the tears were flowing freely. Oh, they were happy tears, of course they were, such bitterly happy tears. Three days ago, lying in their bed back at home in a flat much larger and nicer than their first one, Phil had said those words to him one last time, had beckoned Dan over with the faintest movement of his hand and whispered them because he’d felt the end coming on.

Dan had had to lean in so close, his ear pressed almost to Phil’s lips.

“Today was the best day of my life, because I spent it with you, love.”

“And it was mine too,” Dan had whispered back. A few minutes later, he’d watched Phil slip away, and that’s when he’d realized it, that this was the last best day.

Rosie’s speech was over then, and there was more singing, but Dan couldn’t really focus on anything else that was happening. Someone led him out to a car, and then they were at a cemetery, and they were lowering the box into the ground and throwing dirt over it.

It wasn’t really Phil down there, though. He knew that. Phil wasn’t here anymore, or rather, Phil was inside him, in his memories, and Phil was in the memories of every person here, and he was in Rosie’s laugh, and Lily’s sense of humor, and Oli’s kindness, and he was everywhere except in that box in the ground. He was gone, but it wasn’t really like he’d left at all — more like he’d dissolved into the world around Dan, so that he wasn’t just a physical presence at his side anymore, but rather a part of the very air he breathed.

Dan stayed by the small, grey stone for a long time after everyone else had left, slowly rubbing the platinum band on the ring finger of his left hand.

“It was a good life, Phil. And every day was the best because I got to spend it with you.”

He knelt in the fresh-turned soil, not noticing how it clung to the knees of his trousers and made them wet. He bent forward and placed a kiss against the smooth, cold marble.

“I love you, and I’ll see you soon.”

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on tumblr in response to a weekly prompt on Phanfic


End file.
